A lot of former players have made the jump to television analyst. The list includes Kendrick Perkins, Shaquille O’Neal, Kenny Smith, Charles Barkley, and Chris Webber, to name a few.
In September of 2017, Paul Pierce joined that club when he was hired as a studio analyst for ESPN. Having been featured on Sports Center, NBA Countdown, and more, he is a regular face on the network.
The thing is, Pierce is known for his rather outlandish takes, many of which have been flat-out wrong.
In fact, looking back on the predictions he made at the beginning of the year, all but one of them have come out wrong.
Dang pic.twitter.com/iUnW9K81fd
— NBACentral (@TheDunkCentral) September 11, 2020
He picked the Bucks to win the Championship, but they were unable to get past the Heat in the second round. He picked RJ Barrett for rookie of the year, but he wasn’t even close to surpassing Ja, who won it unanimously. And, of course, he picked Embiid for MVP, who lost to Giannis in a rather anticlimactic race.
Perhaps the only saving grace for the former Celtics star is the Clippers, who still have a chance to make it to the Finals as Pierce predicted.
Regardless, no matter how much the community will blame Pierce for consistently being wrong, not all of it is his fault. This season, especially, was pretty unpredictable and there were some curveballs nobody could have seen coming.
With so many questions going into the Conference Finals, there are likely to be plenty more surprises waiting for fans throughout the remainder of these playoffs, and will be quite interesting to watch it all play out.
